A Tale of Two Thai Soups Via Queensbridge & Elmhurst

Winter’s cold and the attendant coughing and sniffling always call for a good bowl of spicy soup, and Thai noodle soup always fits the bill. Today a look at two of my new favorites: one a Japanese take on Thai green curry and the other an everything but the kitchen sink Thai pork soup.

First up the Queensmatic Green Curry ($17) from Keizo Shimamoto’s Ramen Shack, which is an ajitama’s throw away from where Nas came up in the Queensbridge houses. Shimamoto learned to make a similar green curry ramen while working at Tokyo’s Bassanova Ramen. His curry paste hums with the flavors of lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime and bird’s eye chilies. At first I considered adding some chili oil, but as the heat pleasantly mounted I decided against it.

At Bassanova, the soup base was pork, but Shimamoto feels that a lighter chicken/dashi base allows the Thai flavors to really shine. “It was a tribute to Nas that’s why I called it Queensmatic and Nas doesn’t eat pork so it’s a chicken base, and it has the chicken chashu on it,” Shimamoto says of his creation which he served to local TV crews when they did a piece on the nearby Queensmatic mural of Nas.